Yearning

Yearning

How can you miss someone you never really knew,
And in whose absence, never really knew you?
Whose blood runs through your veins,
Though you are all that remains
Of life that once prospered and grew?

How can you want something that never was to be,
In eyes through which you were never meant to see?
All the riddles and the rhymes,
All the questions lost in time,
The answers to which just might set you free?

How can you love something that is not there,
The dust you worship oblivious to care?
No more thought of loss or win,
Only now what might have been
Before life's spark was dispersed into the air.

This is the yearning of the soul
On its journey to be whole.
Someday you'll have faith to see
What might have been will come to be,
All things are possible when at last we see the Goal.

Connected

When it comes to technology, and the sending and receiving of information, I am more connected now than I have ever been. I have a desktop computer, a laptop, an iPad and a smartphone. Our home is rigged up with wireless Internet. I can access most any piece of information or knowledge within seconds. I can contact anyone I so desire, and can myself be contacted by those same people, within mere moments. I can buy and sell things online with the click of a button, play games with people thousands of miles away with the swish of a finger, give direction to people who work with me via text message without ever setting foot in the office. Without hyperbole, I can easily say I am the most connected person that has ever existed within my family. 

And yet, within the framework of all this connectivity, I can't help but wonder if there might just be a fundamental disconnect, perhaps best expressed in this question: Does the instant access to almost all things diminish us in some way? Is there any value in the practice of waiting?

One of my favorite passages from the Bible comes from 1 Kings. It describes the prophet Elijah, and his meeting with God. The thing is, God didn't just show up. Elijah had to wait for a number of things to happen before he and God could get down to business with each other. 

1 Kings 19:11-13 The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 

I have come to embrace my life of connectivity, and have no desire to give it up. In many ways, access to technology and instant knowledge has allowed me to better function, as both a leader and a human being. Despite this, however, I cannot deny that sometimes there are powerful lessons to be learned simply by waiting for things to come to you, instead of trying to find all the answers at once. There is value in sifting through the winds, earthquakes and fires of life, waiting for the gentle whispers that God sometimes provides. Sometimes, our connection to God comes when we hit the "off button" on everything else. 

Coming Down from the Mountaintop

Luke 9:37-43 The next day, when they came down from the mountain, a large crowd met him. A man in the crowd called out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. A spirit seizes him and he suddenly screams; it throws him into convulsions so that he foams at the mouth. It scarcely ever leaves him and is destroying him. I begged your disciples to drive it out, but they could not.” “You unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you and put up with you? Bring your son here.” Even while the boy was coming, the demon threw him to the ground in a convulsion. But Jesus rebuked the impure spirit, healed the boy and gave him back to his father. And they were all amazed at the greatness of God.

As I read these words from Luke, my mind is immediately drawn to reflect on what happened just prior to these particular verses. Jesus and his disciples went up the mountain, where Jesus was transfigured before those who followed him. He hung out for a bit with Elijah and Moses, both of whom had their own mountaintop experiences with God (Elijah in 1 Kings 19, and Moses in Exodus 24 through 32). Then, after the conferencing, it was time to head back down. So, the verses above are the aftermath of Christ's mountaintop experience. They tell of the moments in which he came back to the "real world" in order to undertake the work God had placed upon him.

I have come to view my career in education as a series of mountaintop experiences, always with the knowledge that, at some point, I was going to have to move back into the real world.

Unit plans, lesson plans, curriculum writing, strategy sessions, workshop attendance . . . all of these things that recharge us and/or focus us as educators, are in many ways not unlike the mountaintop experience Jesus had with Elijah, Moses and his Father. Just as Jesus did, however, we as educators must come back down that mountain, back into the real world.  Sooner or later, our lesson plans have to be put into action, we have to stop playing around with our curriculum, and we have to drive home from that conference we are attending and head back into the classroom, where the real reason we do what we do resides. Our real world is populated by the children we teach, and what an unbelieving and perverse generation they can sometimes be...

There is an inherent nobility in a teacher, the emulator of Christ, who comes to work every day seeking to make life better for all those with whom he or she comes in contact. There is an inherent nobility in all of those educators who "fight the good fight" of seeking to be Jesus for those who do not know him. We in public education cannot tell our students about Jesus overtly (nor should we be able to), but we can model his behavior on a daily basis, and we can seek positive interactions with all of our students, every day, in order to move them toward their own mountaintop experiences.

It doesn't do us any good to stay on the mountaintop forever. There is clearly work to be done.

The Book of Love

I listen to a song, off and on, sung by Peter Gabriel. It's called "The Book of Love."  At this moment, I believe it is one of the truest songs ever written. Its inherent truth does not lie in that the song is about any one factual occurrence -- in actuality, Gabriel's song references no true specific event. Rather, the song is about the process of true love in action, and how living that process, though it is sometimes tedious, is more important than any one event along the way.

The Book of Love is long and boring. No one can lift the damn thing. It's full of charts, and facts and figures, and instructions for dancing. 

Great things happen along the way as we live out the process of true love. Sometimes we dance, whether it be metaphorically or in actuality. But true love is so much more than that. True love is about getting up with the kids and letting your spouse sleep in. It's about changing the litter box, even when you have no desire to do so. It's about driving miles and miles to visit the in-laws, or reading Dr. Seuss books when you would rather be watching Doctor Who re-runs. In short, the process of true love is actually a series of trade-offs, some of which benefit you, and some of which benefit your loved ones, but all of which advance the process of true love to the benefit of all.

There are more verses to the song, and perhaps I will write about those later on. In the meantime, enjoy one of the truest songs ever written.